


Other End of the Leash

by TeratoCybernetics



Category: Discworld, Homestuck
Genre: COPS: the really angry version, Gen, best cahoots ever, crossovers, i wanted this to be funny, the geeaich has a foul mouth, vimes wishes he still drank
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeratoCybernetics/pseuds/TeratoCybernetics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'When Vimes gets around to where the alley opens back up onto the street, it’s a little like hitting the top of a flight of stairs and expecting there to be another step. Neither the horned madman or the thieves are visible. A bit of garbage skitters across the space in a breeze, as if to emphasize the emptiness. Something coils in his guts as he slows and begins following the main artery back. What he finds stops him cold.'</p><p>Whoops, I accidentally crossovered again. Apparently took BramblePatch's GH out for a spin, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other End of the Leash

Taking a deep breath, then letting it out in a long, tired sigh, Vimes regards the young man all in black pinned to a wall by his new and disconcertingly large associate with some annoyance, and more than a little concern. The kid lets out a long and desperately guttural sound, clearly unable to form words around the hand wrapped around his throat.

  
“You can put him down.”

  
“But SHOULD I?” The enormous creature is grinning, one might even say _avidly_ watching the kid going ever paler as he kicks a couple of handspans above the pavement, and this, too, gives Vimes a cause for concern. So far, in their time working together, it’s seemed a little too much for Vimes’ comfort like someone has crafted a body for the Beast to inhabit so that he might do patrols with it. He counts himself lucky that the introductory tour, the one where he learned just how volatile this 'Grand Highblood’ is, had been a notably quiet evening. Explaining fresh bodies, criminals or no, is nowhere near a usual night’s work.

  
“Yes, as the Guild won’t actually approve any contract on me any longer, there was never any intent to kill me. I’m a training exercise.” He doesn’t so much growl in answer, as emit a rumbling that winds up through the bones and shakes the bowels, before dropping the now-purpling would-be assassin to the paving stones in a tangle of awkward limbs and black fabric. The kid fairly trips over himself twice before catching most of his breath, rounding a corner and disappearing into the night. Vimes hands back a canteen half-full of strong coffee; all of his kind are adjusting to a bit of a difference in schedule between the natural nights here and the ones native to wherever they’re from, and he’s been putting it away like most of the Watch officers throw back cheap beer in their off time.

  
“And you’re OKAY with this?”

  
“When they were actively trying to kill me, I saw it as a sign I was doing my job well. This? Is a sign of outright respect.” He begins walking again without looking to see if he’s followed. For something so large, the newcomer moves quietly. He might not be there at all, if it weren’t for the care of his footfalls, unused to an uneven stone surface, and the gravelly chuckle that follows the explanation.

  
“I KNOW you’re not fucking stupid. The ONLY OTHER option is that you’re entirely too FUCKING clever for ANYONE’S good.” He’s still eyeing the shadows, watching the few townsfolk out at this hour, natives and grey visitors alike parting around them like a flock of sheep around something they suspect might be worse than wolves. The latter are possibly more afraid of him than Vimes’ own species. Maybe they know something the humans have yet to learn. Or maybe it’s just that curiosity so easily takes the good sense of most people, and stuffs it into the middens. Probably a little of both.

  
It - _no, he, damnit, he’s a person, at_ least _as bright as you for all the teeth_ \- seems as relaxed as someone so fully a soldier gets, just walking and watching. Almost all of the angry red has faded from the golds of his eyes, and his gait has fallen into an easy, longlegged lope. Unlike most of his compatriots, the _fishy_ ones who eye everyone else like they’re dogshit, who all dress like they were catapulted headfirst into a pips-and-medals crafters’ workshop and never quite recovered, his uniform is unornamented but for what looks like standard insignia, the symbols they all have as identification, and an odd collar. It looks uncomfortably new, pressed sharp, but with the folds of storage still evident. Almost as if someone had gently forced him to obtain a presentable uniform by hiding or destroying the worn one. Sybil has done this at least once to Vimes himself that he knows of, and it makes him smile.

  
“What’s so GODDAMN FUNNY?” The stress on his words and the vulgarity alike seem to be less due to any current emotional reaction and more a reflex and a reflection of how he moves through the world. All of the grey creatures seem to have a sailors’ fondness for invective, except a few very large, stuffy ones that are obviously their highborn. This one tends to use it for both punctuation and emphasis, and occasionally in lieu of outright stabbing the recipient.

  
“Your uniform. You don’t seem like a brand-new-uniform kind of person. The wife has had mine switched out on me more than once, I suspect.” He frowns, and it makes the weird warpaint on his face shift and make new, unsettling faces.

  
“Probably my MOIRAIL.” Vimes notes the unfamiliar term, tries to remember what it means, and a few associations surface; a calm centre, someone who is both firm mental footing and backup blade. “Doesn’t give a FUCK what she’s seen in most times. She’s just a fucking Laughsassin, most of her PANTS are older than you. But I’m a DIFFERENT motherfucking story, eh?”

  
“Of course. You only answer to the bloody ruler, eh? Got to look the bloody part.” Vimes’ answer is dry, and the other snorts despite himself.

  
“Fucking FRONDS is what that is.” A shrug. “At least she doesn’t INSIST that I look like a MOTHERFUCKING glittery shrapnel bomb hit me, like most of the USELESS FUCKS I’ve been traveling with.” The last bit of this trails off some, as he stops to watch something Vimes is hard-pressed to identify. He assumes it’s just one of the things that tend to fade out so he can see when something's really amiss, until three shapes separate from the shadows. They’re running in such a way that one can’t help but assume they stole something, in the general direction of the Shades.

  
As if Vimes wouldn’t venture there. As if he didn’t know that place like breathing.

  
Before he can consciously tell his legs what to do, he’s moving on instinct, boots pounding out a rhythm on the flagstones and filth, his companion hanging a breath behind so as not to get lost in this fetid maze. Vimes signals, pointing the other ahead along the route the group took, while he breaks off into a tangle of alleys he knows will let him cut their quarry off before they get too far in. In the back of his head, as smaller offshoots bring a vast array of smells he never ever wants to place, a repeated prayer to no one god in particular, that something will be left of the miscreants if he doesn’t get to them first. He ignores the Beast’s corollary, that it will be left tribute.

  
When Vimes gets around to where the alley opens back up onto the street, it’s a little like hitting the top of a flight of stairs and expecting there to be another step. Neither the horned madman or the thieves are visible. A bit of garbage skitters across the space in a breeze, as if to emphasize the emptiness. Something coils in his guts as he slows and begins following the main artery back. What he finds stops him cold.

  
“Was WONDERING when you were planning to JOIN the FUCKING PARTY.” Three prone figures, passably familar from one small gang or another, seemingly pinned without cuffs or rope or a Detritus to gently rest a foot on them. Just a tall, coiled-calm monster of a figure swinging a Watch-issue club lazily near where they cower, as if he’s just begging them to step out of line. They are still alive, maybe a little more roughed up than they might have been at Vimes’ own hands, but breathing and mostly unbroken. One of them may have wet themselves, but it’s difficult to tell as they’re also lying in a gutter with all the mysterious and terrible wetnesses that accompany this position.

  
Still, something isn’t right, a scraping discord across his nerves, causing him to want a better grip on his weapon. Instinct, again. It’s winding him up, a man for whom ‘fight’ is a far more familiar dance partner than ‘flight’, tangled up in the feeling of being in close quarters with a boiler that’s ever so ready to explode. He’s sure there’s some kind of ambush, and oh, does he know that whatever they have planned will never be enough.

  
“Did I forget to give you cuffs?” Vimes' words are clipped, shorter than they might need to be, as he hands a pair over, the Beast straining its leash and growling in the back of his mind. His breathing slows, everything is brought up in sharp detail. Fight or flight, and running is never an option.

  
“No. This was MORE GODDAMNED FUN. It’s said FEAR helps you UNDERSTAND someone, how they BEHAVE when they’re BACKED into a MOTHERFUCKING CORNER. You ain’t like MOST of your species, ARE YOU?” There’s an edge to his voice, beneath the laconic, thoughtful tone, as he picks up each of the shivering thieves like they’re ragdolls and cuffs their hands behind them, using both his own and the ones Vimes holds out. “See, I NOTICE THINGS, TOO. Like when you came up that street, ALL KINDS OF READY to cave in some FUCKING HEADS. Like RIGHT NOW, I can feel it ON YOU, SMELL IT. You want to CUT THE FUCK LOOSE?”

  
“Bullshit. Is this you? What are you doing to me?”At first, his only answer is a laugh, rough and unkind.

  
“See? Far too MOTHERFUCKING CLEVER.” And like that, all the tension is gone, slipping away like a cloud off the face of the moon. Vimes steadies himself, watches a profound anger seep in to replace that knife-edge of terror, directed at whatever weird wizard shit he’s sure put it there, and the manipulation inherent in that thought. When he speaks, his voice is taut, and something else stretches tight across the space between them.

  
”You must be looking in a mirror. We‘ve only just met.”

  
“Deny it ALL YOU WANT, motherfucker. These assholes CRY and WET THEMSELVES, like taintchafed WIGGLERS. YOU only want to do AS MUCH DAMAGE AS POSSIBLE on the way out. You MOVE like a fucking killer.” Gods only know how _he_ moves that fast, but in a breath he’s got Vimes by his shirt, up against a wall so they’re eye-to-eye. “I just want you to REMEMBER YOURSELF. File it the MOTHERFUCK AWAY, for future reference when you FORGET that I am capable of GODDAMNED RESTRAINT. I would be FUCKING EXCEEDINGLY appreciative of your TENDENCIES were you working BESIDE me in MY SOCIETY. QUIT TIPTOEING around me like the little CHUCKLEFUCKS that work FOR ME. You aren’t my FUCKING UNDERLING. You’re IN CHARGE, here. ACT IT.”

  
They stare at one another in the dim light for long moments, open incredulity on one face, scorn on the other.

  
“Then the way you dealt with the assassin was a bloody test. You’ve been _testing me_ these past several nights?” Before Vimes knows what’s happening, and with no real explanation for why, he’s laughing. The sound unwinds from him, hard enough that he only kind of notices being set back down, and it takes all of his remaining will not to fall over onto damp pavement, as he laughs until his sides hurt and he has to stop in order to catch his breath, before hauling one of the prisoners to their feet. “Oh, hell. Warn a man when you decide to spar with him, yeah?”

 

“Wouldn’t be much of a TEST, then.” The other two are slung over the Grand Highblood’s shoulders like gibbering, apologetic sacks of potatoes. He’s careful to avoid touching the worst of the questionable stains from the ground. Vimes picks up their loot, inspects it, shaking the sack at the one he’s got.

  
“I hope whatever’s in here was worth this, you bloody lot. Looks like some silverware and a really nice crockery. Robbing old ladies again, hm? Come on, you stupid bastards. We’ll go back to the Watch and you can have a nice, cosy cell, and I can have a bloody cigar.”

  
“Buy you a DRINK? I think one of them DROPPED some of your CURRENCIES.”

  
“Nah, don’t drink anymore.”


End file.
